My money is on Heracross. It outperforms both Gible and Torkoal against Tobias and outperforms Swellow against both Spencer and Tobias. To elaborate Heracross does the bulk of the work against Spencer’s Venasaur to the point where Venasaur is shown panting when Swellow enters the battle and is even explicitly noted to have been weakened. While it’s true that Swellow didn’t get hit directly before KOing Venasaur, it should be noted that Swellow was incredibly exhausted to the point where Ash was worried about what would happen if it was hit by Venasaur’s Solarbeam and Swellow essentially lucked out when the clouds bocked out the sunlight as Venasaur was charging Solarbeam which also gave Swellow the openning to land the finishing Aerial Ace. Swellow then easily got curbstomped by Claydol further indicating how drained it was from the previous battle.

Against Tobias Heracross was able to clash evenly with Darkrai and land damage (with its strongest attack) while Swellow couldn’t do either to Latios. For a comparison of Darkrai and Latios see here: https://forums.serebii.net/threads/which-of-tobias’s-pokemon-was-the-superior-battler.662622/. In addition Torkoal was easily overpowered and KOed without doing anything to Darkrai despite having fought somewhat competitively with Brandon’s Registeel previously and while Gible dealt super-effective damage it was with his arguably weakest move in Rock Smash not to mention that Gible didn’t display the ability to clash evenly with Darkrai like Heracross did.

As for some others Gliscor is really good though it is worth noting that it was only so effective against Paul’s Drapion because wasn’t aware of Gliscor’s Giga Impact rolling trick and hence got caught off-guard resulting in Gliscor being able to deal major damage essentially for free. Gliscor likely wouldn’t have gotten out unscathed had Paul been expecting its trick. Squirtle also deserves a shout for his feats against Macy and Brandon though in this case it’s clear that Squirtle would be decisively below Bulbasaur especially when considering the Brandon performance. Lastly I’ll admit that there is an interpretation where Glalie could be #9 depending on how you choose the viability of Morrison’s Pokémon in particular Glalie > Metang >= Gligar ~ Swellow + Grovyle though I don’t subscribe to that scaling (that scaling is based on the notion that the last Pokémon used by a foe in battle necessarily has to be the strongest).

It’s also fitting that Heracross would be #9 since it gives this amusing result where the top 9 Pokémon would be the the Aces of every region (including Orange Islands) + the Universal Ace (Pikachu) + the Poké-sheriff (Bulbasaur).

Swellow is a strong battler,fast,can take a lot of damage,and has a strong determination.It shared the Hoenn MVP with Grovyle but was the true MVP at the Hoenn League where it took out 2 pokemon in two 6 on 6 full battles (Tyson/Katie).If Swellow got one shotted by Tobias's Latios who used Luster Purge then you'd best believe Krookodile/Bulbasaur/Heracross are sharing the same fate.Krookodile was never the Unova MVP,Pikachu was,it has a case for being Unova League MVP but it'd be sharing the award with Pikachu.

Swellow is a strong battler,fast,can take a lot of damage,and has a strong determination.It shared the Hoenn MVP with Grovyle but was the true MVP at the Hoenn League where it took out 2 pokemon in two 6 on 6 full battles (Tyson/Katie).If Swellow got one shotted by Tobias's Latios who used Luster Purge then you'd best believe Krookodile/Bulbasaur/Heracross are sharing the same fate.Krookodile was never the Unova MVP,Pikachu was,it has a case for being Unova League MVP but it'd be sharing the award with Pikachu.

Shouldn't be even much of an arguement that Bulbasaur deserves the top position here overall. It dealt a substantial amount of damage in bringing down Bramdon's Dusclops who was giving Charizard a hell of a tough time even before Ash made the Seismic Toss blunder and even after taking so much damage from Dusclops (being burnt by Will-O-Wisp 4 times) still managed to tie with an totally undamaged Solrock. A performance that played a huge role in Ash most significant win till date in his journey as a Pokemon trainer, the best landmark successful achievement of Ash so far as a Pokemon trainer, a.k.a. conquering the Kanto Battle Frontier.

Shouldn't be even much of an arguement that Bulbasaur deserves the top position here overall. It dealt a substantial amount of damage in bringing down Bramdon's Dusclops who was giving Charizard a hell of a tough time even before Ash made the Seismic Toss blunder and even after taking so much damage from Dusclops (being burnt by Will-O-Wisp 4 times) still managed to tie with an totally undamaged Solrock. A performance that played a huge role in Ash most significant win till date in his journey as a Pokemon trainer, the best landmark successful achievement of Ash so far as a Pokemon trainer, a.k.a. conquering the Kanto Battle Frontier.

But among the ones mentioned in the poll, I'd say Heracross.

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Where’s Torkoal?

Yeah I’m not discussing Krook vs Bulb again (already did that in the 8th strongest thread which I linked in the OP) though I am going to point out that the part in bold is irrelevant when it comes to establishing Bulbasaur’s strength (“significance of an achievement” in this context has nothing to do with power scaling).

It just slipped my mind, sorry. Added it to the list placing it after Torkoal and left Kingler out of my list because I was mainly interested in making a list of Ash's Top 10 after GPCISS (pre SM).

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Over Gible? You sure about that? Care to elaborate (you don’t need to go over their feats since we’re both very familiar with them though why’re you putting Torkoal over Gible despite Gible outperforming it against Darkrai)?

Over Gible? You sure about that? Care to elaborate (you don’t need to go over their feats since we’re both very familiar with them though why’re you putting Torkoal over Gible despite Gible outperforming it against Darkrai)?

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Honestly it's difficult to assess that because Torkoal's Registeel performance > Gible's Tobias/Conway performance, though then again Torkoal's performance did take a significant backstep vs Tobias as it performed worser than Gible and got obliterated in a heartbeat.

It's pretty much evident that the writers themselves are unsure with how strong Torkoal is.

Honestly it's difficult to assess that because Torkoal's Registeel performance > Gible's Tobias/Conway performance, though then again Torkoal's performance did take a significant backstep vs Tobias as it performed worser than Gible and got obliterated in a heartbeat.

It's pretty much evident that the writers themselves are unsure with how strong Torkoal is.

I guess I'll put both of them at about......4/5 jointly.

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We’ve been over this. Torkoal’s performance against Registeel in isolation would be an A whereas Torkoal’s performance against Darkrai was at best that of a B+ Pokémon. With this in mind Torkoal was put in A- with the notion that it had a mild positive variation in the Registeel performance and a mild negative variation in the Tobias performance (since mild variations are far more believable than Torkoal having some once in a life time outlier performance against Registeel). Not to mention that Gible’s A- rating is also on the conservative end since it implicitly assumes that Gible won extreme diff against Conway eventhough the actual difficulty of the win isn’t entirely clear. Given performances in the same battle I’d put Gible as a cap for Torkoal though I put them both in A-, so I guess it’s fine either way (since if we could objectively rank Ash’s Pokémon from 1 - 39 then there’d be no point in ratings).

We’ve been over this. Torkoal’s performance against Registeel in isolation would be an A whereas Torkoal’s performance against Darkrai was at best that of a B+ Pokémon. With this in mind Torkoal was put in A- with the notion that it had a mild positive variation in the Registeel performance and a mild negative variation in the Tobias performance (since mild variations are far more believable than Torkoal having some once in a life time outlier performance against Registeel). Not to mention that Gible’s A- rating is also on the conservative end since it implicitly assumes that Gible won extreme diff against Conway eventhough the actual difficulty of the win isn’t entirely clear. Given performances in the same battle I’d put Gible as a cap for Torkoal though I put them both in A-, so I guess it’s fine either way (since if we could objectively rank Ash’s Pokémon from 1 - 39 then there’d be no point in ratings).

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torkoal is a weird case in that he has 1 or 2 great performances in a sea of mediocre ones